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| Hypocritical PQ leader educated at McGill |
The Parti Quebecois isn't in danger of disappearing, there will always be a core of militant separatists who although ageing, still endure, albeit in smaller and smaller numbers.
But the PQ actually faces a future that may be sadder than its actual demise, that is to remain what it has become... sad and irrelevant.
With sovereignty unachievable, the PQ has had to carve out another role for itself, and so now defines itself as the defender of Quebec's 'pur laine' society..
So we can expect the continued and constant harangue of 'Chicken Little' warnings of imminent linguistic and cultural doom.
It is tiresome and sad.
With zero chance of gaining power, the party has been freed up to embrace a more radical platform which includes a proposed referendum and more language militancy. The leadership, which has always tempered the hubris and excess of the militant base no longer has anything to lose.
And so the PQ leader, who opposed the idea of banning English CEGEP for francophones when he ran for the leadership has abruptly changed positions.
As they say, desperate times call for desperate measures.
"Plamondon started his academic studies at Collège André-Grasset, which he graduated from in 1997. He would later receive a bachelor's degree in civil and common law from McGill University in 2001, a diploma in International Law from Lund University in 2001, and an MBA from Oxford University in 2006." Wikipedia
By the way, Lund University is in Sweden and offers Law courses in Swedish and English. The website doesn't list a course in International law, but rather International Human Rights law, a course taught in English.
I don't begrudge Monsieur Plamondon an English education, I actually applaud it. An English education opened up the world to him, as too it would for francophone CEGEP students.
It's a bit sad that he's now defending an anti-English education platform for political expediency because he always seemed to be a realistic straight-shooter. It's sad how politics and the pressure of leadership in a dogmatic party bring out the worst.
Just ask Thomas Mulcair whose leadership was brought down for his lack of enthusiasm for moronic radical policies.
I'm reminded of the 1950's musical gem "The Music Man" where a flimflam artist tells the townsfolk that a pool hall is threatening their community and that the only cure is to set up a marching band with him conveniently selling them the instruments.
To a situation you do not wish to acknowledge
Or you are not aware of the caliber of disaster indicated
By the presence of a
I say, trouble right here in
The threat of English CEGEP is as simplistic and just as stupid.
When I first watched the movie I wondered out loud how the townsfolk could be so gullibly stupid.
Now I know.
Motive aside, let us examine the so-called threat that English language CEGEP poses to Quebec's francophone majority because after all, every policy should address a specific issue or problem or a semblance thereof.
Saying that francophones and Allophones attending English CEGEP is a threat to French Quebec may be easy to do, but not so easy to prove because frankly it is, just more separatist smoke and mirrors, a fantasy woven to fire up the moribund apathetic Francophone electorate.
You got trouble....
I usually try to make a researched and thoughtful (in my opinion) rebuttal of the issue I address but in this case, I will not attempt to disprove this nonsense. It is like arguing against the idea of a flat Earth.
Suffice to say that there isn't a study or reference or published fact that would support the idea that English CEGEP is a threat. Everybody who has led any political party knows this truth, including the current PQ leadership.
The only point I wish to make is to address the fantasy that those who go to English CEGEP are somehow magically transformed into anglophones.
Francophones schooled in French and who were brought up in a French home remain Francophones even if they attend English CEGEP.(just like the PQ leader.)
Allophones who absorb themselves into the English community have made that choice long before CEGEP. Most who do have been brought up in an English milieu at home, despite being schooled in French
I have heard the racist argument that Francophones who go to English CEGEP are in danger of marrying or partnering with a dreaded Anglophone and are lost to the francophone nation.
The only fact in this article that I do cite is that in the case of an Anglophone/Francophone union, two-thirds of the children are sent to French primary schools.
Most francophone parents are alright with their children being forced into French primary and high schools.
But for parents of highly gifted and motivated children who want to round out their education and life prospects by attending English CEGEP and university, denying them the opportunity is akin to telling them that they are second-class citizens.
It is political dynamite that no party which actually aspires to power would embrace.
And finally, until the PQ provides some facts and figures to support their anglicization fantasy we should not engage them in useless and silly debate.
The mainstream media, both English and French fail miserably to call out the PQ on this nonsense.
It isn't incumbent on those who believe that the Earth is a sphere to disprove that the Earth is flat, it is the other way around.
